Boys' Education

Men For Tomorrow

There are growing signs in Britain today of men failing to contribute adequately to the communities they live in. In the UK, men have increasingly been seen as marginal to family life. Men for Tomorrow suspects that this may underly their growing failure to contribute adequately to the communities they live in. Family men make better citizens. MfT will carry out research to explore this, and produce social policy suggestions to alleviate current problems.

“It is widely understood that de-industrialisation and the reduction in jobs depending mainly on manual labour have increased male unemployment in recent decades. What is less appreciated is that this has been aggravated by rising levels of basic non-employability, absent fatherhood, crime and suicide; all of which can be seen as indicators of a lost generation of men.

Future generations are in danger of repeating the problems of today. This waste of manpower is something the country can ill afford at the present time or in the future; and most women do not want it either, for their husbands, partners or sons. MfT is committed to throwing more light on what is going on, and to helping draft policies which prevent current problems becoming entrenched.

Several organisations have looked at aspects of men’s behaviour in the UK in recent years. But they have been reluctant to question the libertarian assumption that men and women enjoy the same interests and motivations, and respond to social influences in just the same way. MfT will broaden the debate by interrogating research data in an objective way while being open to traditional understandings of men’s difference, as explored in Geoff Dench’s books Transforming Men and The Place of Men (see ‘publications’). This will help to identify the most effective ways of looking at men’s behaviour.”